Mr.Grey refused to make any farther communication, simply saying that he would as yet express no opinion.
"For myself," said Augustus, as he left the attorney's chambers, "I can only profess myself so much astonished as to have no opinion.

I suppose I must simply wait and see what Fortune intends to do with me." At the end of a fortnight Mr.Scarborough had so far recovered his strength as to be able to be moved down to Tretton, and thither he went.
It was not many days after that "the world" was first informed that Captain Scarborough was not his father's heir.

"The world" received the information with a great deal of expressed surprise and inward satisfaction,--satisfaction that the money-lenders should be done out of their money; that a professed gambler like Captain Scarborough should suddenly become an illegitimate nobody; and, more interesting still, that a very wealthy and well-conditioned, if not actually respectable, squire should have proved himself to be a most brazen-faced rascal.

All of these were matters which gave extreme delight to the world at large.
At first there came little paragraphs without any name, and then, some hours afterward, the names became known to the quidnuncs, and in a short space of time were in possession of the very gentry who found themselves defrauded in this singular manner.
It is not necessary here that I should recapitulate all the circumstances of the original fraud, for a gross fraud had been perpetrated.

After the perpetration of that fraud papers had been prepared by Mr.Scarborough himself with a great deal of ingenuity, and the matter had been so arranged that,--but for his own declaration,--his eldest son would undoubtedly have inherited the property.